As the war in Vietnam mercifully wound down, service members who returned home to Corpus Christi, Texas would go to dances and events organized by my grandmother, who was in charge of the local USO office. The idea of my very Catholic granny holding a dance always amuses me, but given her lifelong commitment to caring for those in need and the long history of military service in my family I guess it's not that surprising.

Only 1% of our population has been deployed in either Iraq or Afghanistan, which means it's possible now to not be related to or close friends with anyone who served there. It isolates us and makes us forget, unless we're directly confronted with it, that there are a lot of people waiting for someone to come home.

What does that have to do with Jeep? Not much, and until the very end you'd have thought this was an ad for the USO… which it sort of was.

It's not as powerful as Halftime in America, but a half-Italian company with a marketing department headed up by a French guy knows better than anyone that you never lost sales by appealing to American patriotism.